New Tester

I didn’t think we really needed a tester, but months ago we put in a request for one. Now we finally have a new Automated Tester!

He is off to an amazing start…an amazingly bad start.

He did a bit of manual testing to understand what we have so far. He logged two bugs which are probably the same issue. On the stand-up, he says they are “minor”, so I assumed minor cosmetic issues.

When I encountered the issues, I would categorise them as major cosmetic. One of them was that the menu panel appears at the opposite side of the screen! How does that even happen? The second issue was that it sometimes didn’t appear at all! 

The control is completely broken then. I’d say it’s pretty urgent given how little features we have.

He then starts writing automated tests, and the first one he submitted seemed to be backwards. I told him the test didn’t make sense, he kept on saying “it’s just a sample”. I didn’t understand what he meant, it should be a valid test. It was on the lines of :

GIVEN I navigate to the LogIn Screen
AND I enter valid credentials
WHEN I click Log In
THEN I am taken to the Home Page

although what he wrote was

GIVEN I navigate to the Home Page
AND I enter valid credentials
WHEN I click Log In
THEN I am taken to the LogIn Screen

I told him the page names were the wrong way around. He was demanding I let him check it in because the test passes; it is fine. I told him if that test passes, I don’t trust the framework.

He then explains that the test finds the title of the webpage is “Home Page”, then you are redirected to the LogIn Screen. After you type your credentials and click Log In, you are taken to the Home Page. However, the check doesn’t wait for the page to load, so at the time it checks, it finds “Log In Screen”.

So the test is crap basically, but instead of fixing it, he specifies the wrong page titles to get the test to pass. The functionality is correct, but the test is Invalid but Passes.

I eventually (reluctantly) agree to let him check it in anyway on the promise that when he adds more tests, he also fixes that. A week or so later, he sends an update. You will definitely think I’m making these stories up.

GIVEN I navigate to the Home Page
AND I enter valid credentials
WHEN I click Log In
THEN I am taken to the Home Page
WHEN I click logout
THEN I am taken to the Home Page

Yeah, that’s right, we are always on the Home Page no matter what we do. How can that pass this time? I’m out of ideas.